If you’re a parent, and your child has food allergies you understand how important it is to monitor their diet and health. What causes allergies? They’re brought on by reactions, produced by your immune system, to particular kinds of foods. A food allergy can create critical health issues in people and sometimes it can be fatal.
The numbers
It’s been reported that about 2% of adults have a food allergy, while about 6% of children have the problem. Don’t confuse them with food intolerances. Food intolerances do not have anything to do with your immune system. When you have an allergy to food your immune system makes a mistake and treats a specific sort of food as a harmful product. So as to guard your body from the food material your immune system stimulates specific body cells to make antibodies to attack the material. If you consume that specific thing again your immune system releases histamine in addition to other chemicals that flow into your blood stream.
Good to know
These compounds create allergic symptoms. Symptoms of food allergies normally occur a couple of minutes or up to about an hour after swallowing the product. Doctors think that histamine is part of the reason for many common allergic reactions, like rashes and hives, runny nose, diarrhea, nausea difficulties, itchy eyes, dry throat, difficulty breathing, and anaphylactic shock.
What Causes Food Allergies in Children? Most doctors and health care specialists point to milk from cows, wheat, and soybeans as the primary causes of food allergies in children. If your child is allergic to soybeans you will need to remember to read the ingredients of all of the food you buy which is a part of the diet. Soy is in much more food items than you may think.
Final note
You may find soy in protein powders, cereal, candy bars bread oils, protein bars, fast food, and many meat, especially pork products. If you think you may have a food allergy you should speak with your health care provider. It may be confusing to determine alone as sometimes a specific component caused the allergy, not the specific food itself. You doctor will have the ability to help you in pinpointing the cause of your allergy and supplying the essential treatment procedure (s).
